No, Trump Isn’t Planning to Round Up or Register Muslims

George Takai is fueling the flames of fear with divisive, partisan bullshit:

So when I hear Donald Trump’s transition advisors talk about building a registry of Muslims and his surrogates using the internment of Japanese-Americans as their model, I am outraged — because I remember the tears streaming down my mother’s face as we were torn away from our home. And I am resolved to raise my voice and say, loudly and clearly, that this is not who we are.

George is a man that had spent years of his youth in the absolutely deplorable internment camps of America. I hear his concern. Fortunately, it is completely unfounded in fact.

The statement in question was not made by a member of Trump’s transition team, but a spokesman for a pro-Trump super PAC. And he did not say that the internment of Japanese-Americans was a “model” — in fact, as even the New York Times reported, he said that he would not want to do it again.

Furthermore, there is no proposal to create a “registry” of Muslims, but to reinstate a post-9/11 policy from the George W. Bush and early Barack Obama administrations of tracking immigrants and visitors from certain foreign countries, including Muslim-majority countries, where terrorism is a concern.

The job of a government is to protect it’s citizens. Keeping track of immigrants and visitors from countries that have connections to terrorism is necessary to do so. But president-elect Donald Trump isn’t calling for a registry, internment, or deportation of Muslim American citizens.